A few days ago I made the comment that current MMO players are ‘soft’ compared to those that played UO/EQ and such. Instead of using the word ‘soft’, I think I prefer spoiled. Spoiled by todays crop of games into thinking we are more important than we really are in an MMO world. The very idea of an MMO is that you are but one player in a giant, living world, out to make your mark on it in any way you can. Somewhere along the way, this changed to ‘you are the hero, and everything revolves around you’.

I’m not exactly sure when this happened, and I don’t think you can blame any one single game out for the shift in thinking, but comparing the MMOs of today to the originals and it’s very clear to me that this has happened. The old joke of doing multiple ‘kill rats’ quests reflects this, in that back in the day players often did seemingly un-heroic deeds to get by, while in todays games everything you do is wrapped around earth-shattering lore and conclusions. Instead of killing a few bears to feed a farmer, you now raid a food stockpile to save an entire continent from starvation.

The problem is that everyone is saving that same continent from starvation, only I did it in my instance, and you did it in yours. And somehow we both came out with the same exact epic sword as a reward. And since everyone has done this epic quest, it’s now just ‘quest x’ along the way to maxing out, so we can get together with x number of people and raid the pantry of evil to save the world; all for a far more epic looking sword, the same one you saw in town being used by twenty other characters.

In reality today’s MMOs share more with a single players RPG than they do with anything ‘worldly’. Somehow developers tricked us into paying $15 a month to log into a single players game, where we jump from instance to instance completing quests while gearing up. Oh well I guess we pay that $15 for a chat room of dubious quality and the ability to bring a few friends along on some quests, right?

To make matters worse, nothing you do can really impact the world you are in. No one outside of their server cares who the top raiding guild is, or who is the top PvP team. Hell even world firsts are forgotten as quickly as the forum post drops off the front page. Few of todays games give anyone the opportunity to be a Rainz or Istvaan Shogaatsu. Unless you have a hit youtube video, you are not likely to be the next Leeroy Jenkins.

Players today are tricked into thinking they are the hero, and in actuality any abilities to do something truly special has been stripped away. Instead of a PvP guild making its mark on the world by making certain regions dangerous to traverse, we now have repeatable ‘epic’ quests to open gates to instances, gates that will eventually open regardless of any one players actions. Instead of a famed smith producing rare items, we have an auction house packed with any ‘epic’ item a player could want.

This has also led to the trend of players expecting to get everything they want as quickly as possible. Anything that takes actual planning, patience, and yes work, is considered ‘unfun’. Far too often you read a forum and see a ‘I don’t play games to work, and I don’t want others interfering in my gaming’. Is this not what MMOs are about, are they not a living world that we INTERACT with, good or bad? If you truly want a safe ‘I’m the hero’ experience, should you not be playing a single player RPG?

I told myself I would not focus on games ‘coming soon’, as nothing disappoints more than getting all hyped about a game that when released is simply ‘meh’, but with that said, I am very encouraged by the latest WAR podcast. Without breaking it all down, the part that I found most interesting was Mythic’s re-focus on open field PvP rather than instances. Now who (other than beta testers) really knows exactly what this ‘re-focus’ actually means, and instance PvP is still in the game, but at the very least it sounds like some form of open field PvP will be supported. From all my PvP experience over multiple games, the most memorable moments have always been the unexpected ones, and it’s rather difficult to have something unexpected happen in an enclosed, preset instance.

The open field PvP will also be highlighted by the return of Keeps, a key feature in Dark Age of Camelot, Mythic’s previous game. Keeps were generally the area where the major battles took place, and hopefully this continues in WAR. Rumors on forums before the close of the last beta indicated that capture points were too easy to tag, and were also somewhat pointless. It seems Mythic listened to a lot of that feedback and now intends to give open PvP some meaning.

So my four year old computer died, a deadly combination of motherboard and CPU failure. Cost-wise it made no sense to replace both pieces, as the computer was already showing its age. So instead I went ahead and ordered a new Alienware. Weee.

This will be my first Alienware, after ordering an ABS two times before. While happy with ABS, I wanted to give Alienware a try, plus the price (just under 3,000) was far more reasonable than what ABS was offering. The computer comes with Vista loaded, so we will see how that goes. Recent research shows a lot of the early issues seem to be getting resolved, and the lure of Crysis in DX10 glory is quite strong. That plus playing games like The Witcher and NWN2 MotB without framerate issues will be nice, and I’m looking forward to cranking EVE to max at 1900×1200.

Gear is important in an MMO, as it not only allows our characters to grow in power, but also gives us something to work towards and look forward to. This applies whether you have a PvE focused game or a PvP one. The degree of importance can vary, but it is always a factor; whether it’s something as simple as picking up a weapon in a FPS game or something as complex as an epic quest item in EQ; both are examples of items improving your character.

Now let’s say we have a PvP focused game, and each time you kill a character they drop an item. This method is one of the major ways to gain gear and is a prime focus of the player base. You have two choices with regards to the defeated player, they either lose an item or they don’t. In the game with player loss, the item you get off the corpse is that exact item the defeated player losses. In the other game, it’s a randomly generated item by the game based on level. How exactly would these two systems play out?

In game one, players would avoid death at all costs, since each death would cost them something of value. Clearly in this game item loss and gain would be fairly rapid, as you would be constantly losing and gaining new items based on your PvP performance. A good day would result in a positive gain, with you storing away excess items for later use. A bad day would mean you have to dip into your item bank, or worst case go farm new items to get back into PvP. Over time the better PvP players would build up a sizable collection of items, and could afford to use, and lose, top quality stuff. Factors like how skills your guild mates are would be of utmost importance, and crafters that could provide gear that would give you an edge would be highly valued.

In game two, death would mean you don’t gain an item, and so would be somewhat unfavorable as it would delay the process of getting more powerful. Any time you find an item less powerful than the one you own would be useless, as you would always use your best gear at all times. It would be entirely possible for weak players to gain access to the most powerful gear due to the randomness of the item on a corpse, and once acquired they would remain powerful until the game introduces new gear. Powerful guilds would only serve to speed up the process of gearing up, and once ‘maxed out’ players would have little reason beyond social to stay in any one guild. Crafting would only be valued if the item crafted was easier to acquire and more powerful than that which can be gained in PvP, anything less would be considered a waste of time.

Clearly the above is over-simplified, but I think it drives the point home as to why PvP can’t be positive sum. Players need more motivation to compete beyond the simple ‘its fun to win’. If you look at PvP as a risk vs reward formula, where the two must balance each other out, clearly the higher you make the risk the greater you make the reward. And perhaps more importantly, the lower you set the risk, the lower you can make the reward. Remove risk, and you basically remove reward. That’s the current state of BG’s in WoW, zero risk. Regardless if I watch TV and make my character twitch for 30 minutes, or if I go all out and play to the full extent of my abilities, at the end both methods will eventually get me enough points to purchase every single item I could want. Even worse is the fact that method two might only speed this process up by a marginal amount, depending on random factors I have no control over. With that as your reward system, it’s no wonder why so many WoW players could care less about BG performance, and why so many play a team based activity in a purely singular fashion. Even players that put the time and effort into building a twink generally don’t care about winning a BG as much as they care about scoring huge critical hits on lower level players, ignoring anything that might be going on around them.

If you need further proof, gather 15 people together, level yourself to say level 25, queue up as a group to AB, and see what happens. Unless you run into a pre-built team of twinks, you will likely dominate AB even against full teams of level 29 players. Half the opposition will likely run around at random, running into 3v1 situations and getting themselves murdered. You will easily be able to control the 3-4 players that actually seem to be trying to win. Level that same team to 29, get half decent gear, and you can 5 cap AB all day long, to the point that AB won’t even be fun for you anymore, simply because nothing you face is a challenge.

It’s a very sad state, and hopefully future games are learning this valuable lesson from WoW. Learning that perhaps giving everyone something may be a short term way of keeping people happy, but long term it destroys the system, and converts it into a mindless points grind.

Tobold made a post today talking about Raph’s PvP post, to which I responded to back here. Yes, confusing blog interlinking at its best here folks.

Tobold for some time now has taken the stance of ‘positive sum’ for PvP, meaning everyone involved has to come out ahead, winner and loser. His reasoning is that no one wants to pay $15 a month to be kicked around daily. He backs this up by quoting a fellow guild mate who was complaining about the recent changes to honor gain in Alterac Valley in WoW; the change being the loser gets far less honor then they did previously, in an effort to emphasize winning.

This made me wonder, at which point did we all get so soft that we can’t accept defeat, that we all expect a cookie for effort regardless of the outcome. This reminds me of the parents who want to put a scoring limit on high school sports, or who want to give every team a trophy at the end of the season regardless of the win/loss record. Hugs all around. Good thing the real world works like that too right, otherwise we might be setting our kids up for a harsh dose of reality whenever we finally expose them to it. Good luck with that speech when little Tommy gets cut from the team, even though you have been telling him he is a winner all along.

The sad result of carebearing PvP is that people stop caring. The reason people AFK in WoW PvP is that it works. You still get a cookie, so why put the effort in? It’s the same reason you see level 20 players queue up for the 20-29 battleground. Sure they can’t do a thing in the match, and more than likely lead to their sides defeat, but since they get points anyway, why not? You can be the biggest asshat in the world, and WoW will still reward you. You will eventually get your easy-mode epics just like everyone else, even if you have never actually won a single round of PvP, or ever bothered to work as a team, or learn actual strategy.

With EVE still growing, clearly there is a market for PvP that actually matters, where being an asshat has consequences. EVE has negative sum PvP, but it’s only negative to those that refuse to pay attention, or stop to think once in a while. If you fly out in your new battleship to low-sec, without scouting or knowing what you are doing, you should learn a pricy lesson. The next time you buy that expensive ship, maybe you will be a bit more careful, and actually respect the world around you. It’s an MMO, sorry, you are not the hero. If the only thing you can handle in a game is to be the center of attention at all times, I suggest a single player game.

And before anyone leaves the comment of ‘it’s a game, I play for fun’, I’ll counter with so does everyone else. If I queue up to PvP in WoW, it’s because I want to have fun and PvP. It’s not fun to finally get in only to see your side is half full with AFK and lowbie players. You know you are going to get rolled, and the only question left is whether the other side is going to farm you in the middle for a bit, or just run up and down the field to end the battle quickly. Give WoW a harsher penalty for death, and all of a sudden the afk and lowbie farmers are gone, and what is left is people that actually enjoy PvP for the competition, people that have half a clue to what they are doing. All of a sudden Tommy asshat either learns to play nice, or continues to get kicked around until he does.

I hope that Warhammer online does not take the ‘hugs all around’ approach to PvP. Not only would that bastardize the lore of Warhammer, but it would lead to the laughable PvP we see in WoW. Tobold wonders why players would bother to defend Keeps if they don’t get some personal reward for doing so, even in a losing effort. I wonder if that thought ever crossed the minds of DAoC players when they defended Keeps or raided for relics, or if EVE players ever bothered to consider some new shiny when they go out and risk a kitted ship in a PvP tourney…